Mitchell, Fossil: The West - An Appreciation of Place (photo essay)

December 12, 2012 4:42 PM

Since my first glimpse of Oregon, I have been fascinated with the diversity and power of this landscape. Here, there is a wealth to our natural world that is unmatched. For the past eight years I've kept a file on my computer named, "Western Landscape''. It's filled with nearly 4,000 photographs from travels through Oregon and neighboring states. When I scroll through the pictures as a body of work, all sorts of parallels are evident. Some of the images are connected through story, some through place and some simply share a visual texture. So we begin today to share these photographs, two-by-two, sure that they revel more together than they ever could alone. We hope these tiny nuggets inspire you to discovery.

Leonard Kopcinski’s .44 Magnum is strapped to his waist and a baseball-sized thunder egg is nestled in his palm. The weight of the big holstered revolver threatens to shear “Kop’s” tight black jeans from his shapeless hips, but the 89-year-old miner who served as a World War II Marine scout sniper is comforted by the pistol. Besides, he says, I’d never leave this place undefended.

The Lucky Strike mine is a mile high in The Ochoco Mountains at the dead end of skinny gravel road. The mine has been Kopcinski’s summer base since 1962, the year he and a couple of close friends spread the ashes of his friend and partner — David Hammersly — in the main digging pit of the thunder egg mine. Hammersly always said he wanted to blow with the dust at The Lucky Strike and when he died, Kopcinski made it happen.

Thunder eggs, also known as geodes, were voted Oregon’s state rock in 1965 and by then Kopcinski was their unofficial father. He’s the first to say they are not exactly rocks. They are spheres, rough on the outside, and often brilliant in color on the inside, especially when polished. Some scientists say that thunder eggs are born from lava flow, maybe from gas bubbles that formed as the lava hardened.

Native American legend says the stones were once used as weapons by bickering Thunder Spirits who lived on Mount Jefferson and Mount Hood. The spirits are said to have thrown the stones at each other during thunderstorms giving them the name thunder eggs.

Kop thinks his thunder eggs are the most beautiful in the world. The color, designs and inclusions in the agate are better at The Lucky Strike than any other mine, he says. For 50 years he has invited the public to come see for themselves, charging by the pound for the thunder eggs they find. Public diggers are also welcome in places like Wheeler High School in Fossil where they dig for fossils or in Plush where they hope to find sunstone, Oregon’s state gem.

This past summer, a young man digging at The Lucky Strike hauled out a thunder egg bigger than a watermelon and weighing 66 pounds, the largest egg unearthed at The Lucky Strike in more than a decade.

The commotion around the find affirmed Kopcinski’s belief that treasure in the ground makes children of us all.